Netflix’s Death Note: A Second Viewing Attempt…A Second Failure

Yeah, I tried watching the Netflix adaptation of Death Note again–the entire hour-and-a-half of one of manga’s (and dare I say anime’s?) most beloved works.

And oh no. No no no…

I couldn’t do it. Again.

The first time I tried watching this film (which for some idiotic reason was Westernized and moved to Seattle, Washington) I made it to the point where Light Turner (Yagami, dammit, his name is Light Yagami) sees Ryuk for the first time. That’s it–that’s as far as I watched because his reaction was so over-the-top and wrong in every way that I couldn’t handle it. Light didn’t scream when he saw Ryuk. Light was calm and calculated, so this was a major turn-off for me.

But, I decided maybe I’d been a bit harsh on the adaptation based off one scene, so why not give it another chance?

Well, I was once again wrong. An hour into the movie (at which point I’d shaken my head in disgust multiple times), with Light’s girlfriend making herself well-known, with Light not being anywhere near the task force designed to hunt down Kira, with L not having said anything about what the task force should call him (there really wasn’t a task force to begin with, honestly), with no sign of Rem or anything about N…I just couldn’t do it.

The movie is an hour and a half….so in thirty minutes they were supposed to cram so much more into it? No, I don’t think so. I tried again, and once again this movie failed me. I hoped it would get better after the displeasure that was Light screaming when he met Ryuk, but I was let down.

I hoped in every way that Willem Dafoe as Ryuk could be a saving grace, but he wasn’t. Willem Dafoe was why I was interested in the first place, to be completely honest. And still…an actor of his caliber wasn’t enough to save this horrendous adaptation.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, could make this better in any way whatsoever. There’s too much material in Death Note to make it into a movie. The anime was fantastic in my opinion, but a movie? No. Hell, I’d take a live-action series that actually used the source material to be honest, but I’m fairly positive that won’t be happening, so let’s chalk that up to a fat zero.